As a Xero user, you already appreciate the value of real-time financial insights.
But as your business scales and bill volumes grow, manual invoice processing can quickly become a bottleneck. More approvers, cost centres, and data to manage often lead to reduced control, declining accuracy, and an increased risk of errors. You may also find that your workflows require more advanced automation and data capture.
With automated invoice processing for Xero with Agilico Verify, you can transform the way your business manages bills and supplier invoices. Verify helps you maintain tighter control, capture more accurate data, and gain confidence that your financial information is complete and correct.
In this guide, we’ll explore the real cost of manual invoice processing, how automation enhances Xero, the key capabilities and benefits of Agilico Verify, and how our customers are achieving greater efficiency and control through smarter invoice workflows.
The Challenge of Manual Invoice Processing
Xero is an excellent finance system for startups and smaller SME’s, offering helpful automation features that many similar systems lack. But as businesses begin to scale, Xero’s pre-built tools can struggle to keep up with growing demands. More complex invoices with multiple lines, additional cost centres, and more can make invoice processing feel overwhelming.
Typical invoice processing workflows in Xero vary depending on how bills enter the system. Users can manually key bill data into Xero, or forward emailed bills to Xero’s unique bills address, where basic header information is extracted. Users then need to code the bill and manually route it to up to one approver. Any additional approvals must happen outside the system. Once approved, the bill is ready for payment. While this works for smaller businesses, it becomes limiting when multiple approvals, detailed line item capture, or PO matching are required.
Common challenges include:
- Time-consuming manual tasks: Handling PDFs, entering data, forwarding bills, and chasing approvals consumes significant time as volumes grow.
- Higher risk of errors: Manual coding and data entry increase the likelihood of duplicates, incorrect amounts, or misapplied coding.
- Slower approval cycles: Bills often stall in inboxes or within Xero, leading to delayed payments or missed early-payment opportunities.
- Lack of visibility: Tracking where a bill is in the approval chain becomes difficult, especially when additional approvals occur outside of Xero. This increases the risk of fraud or unauthorised spend.
- Limited scalability: As bill volumes rise, manual steps become difficult to manage, and adding headcount isn’t always a sustainable solution.
This is where automated invoice processing for Xero can transform your operations.
Research shows that manually processing a single invoice can take between 8 and 15 minutes and cost £4 to £8 per invoice in staff time.
For a medium-sized business processing 500 invoices per month, that equates to over £24,000 a year in hidden costs.
As invoice volumes increase, these costs grow proportionally, making automation one of the most effective ways to reduce operational overheads within finance teams.
As bill volumes increase, manual processes quickly become a bottleneck. Automation removes these pressures, improving efficiency, accuracy, and visibility. The Skills Federation experienced this first-hand. Despite relatively low invoice volumes, each bill had to be manually entered into Xero, consuming time better spent elsewhere. The Finance Manager also had to review bills every Monday just to keep weekly forecasts accurate. Looking for a more efficient approach, they adopted Agilico Verify:
“We went for the change because we wanted a finance department to run as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
Finance Manager, The Skills Federation
With Verify, they reduced manual effort, improved visibility, and maintained financial control without added administrative work.
Why Agilico Verify for Xero?
Agilico Verify is designed to enhance your existing Xero setup by adding the automation, control and governance tools growing organisations need – without changing the way you work.
Here’s what sets Verify apart:
- Native Xero integration: Verify connects directly with Xero, syncing suppliers, bills, and coding to keep your financial data accurate and consistent.
- Rapid deployment: Verify can be live in weeks with minimal disruption to your existing finance workflow.
- End-to-end purchase management: Fully compatible with Agilico POP, our purchase order processing solution, enabling a complete purchase-to-pay workflow.
- Stronger approval controls: Build tailored approval routes using departments, projects, cost centres, and more, with support for multi-level workflows, multi-entity processing, and full audit visibility.
- Improved financial governance: Gain full traceability across every invoice, reduce the risk of unauthorised spend, and strengthen financial control.
- Line-item capture and PO matching: Automatically extract invoice lines and match invoices to purchase orders for tighter accuracy and oversight.
- Secure data hosting: Cloud-based, secure, and fully aligned with GDPR requirements to protect your financial data.
- Dedicated UK support: Verify is implemented and supported by Agilico’s UK-based customer success teams, providing reliable, ongoing guidance.
Together, these capabilities enhance Xero with a more controlled, efficient, and scalable accounts payable process – helping your finance team do more with less manual effort.
How Verify Automated Invoice Processing for Xero Works
Verify is a cloud-based automated invoice processing system for Xero that adds the advanced control, accuracy and efficiency growing organisations need. While Xero provides helpful automation features out of the box, Verify extends these capabilities with deeper data capture, stronger approval governance, and end-to-end visibility, helping finance teams manage increasing invoice volumes without adding manual workload.
The process begins when a bill is emailed into the Verify system. Within minutes, Verify intelligently extracts key details, including header and line information, business entity, supplier, PO number, invoice number, date, and net/VAT/gross values.
For PO invoices, if the document matches an approved purchase order from Xero or Agilico POP, our integrated purchase order processing solution, it can be posted to Xero automatically. If not, it enters a guided matching process to resolve discrepancies before posting.
Non-PO expense invoices follow an exception workflow. Verify allows coding by a variety of dimensions, including department, cost centre, project, and more. These bills are then automatically routed to the correct approvers for up to 3 levels of approval. Once approved, the data is automatically posted directly to Xero. This flexibility gives you full control over spend allocation and confidence that every invoice is fully approved before payment is made.
All invoice data – including audit trails, notes, and approvals – is securely stored and instantly searchable within Verify, providing a complete, paperless record for reporting and audit readiness. Verify’s customisable reporting tool also delivers real-time insight into approval bottlenecks, cash flow commitments, and overall spend.
For more information about how Verify enhances invoice processing in Xero, please download our product sheet:
Read the Full Case Study”Verify saves me a great deal of time and enables our finance team to operate at a greater tempo, which is key with how time-sensitive our industry can be. Not sure what we would do without it now.
Chief Finance & Operating OfficerCitizen Watch
The Benefits of Automating Invoice Processing with Verify
Implementing Verify for Xero isn’t just about processing invoices faster; it’s about giving your finance team greater control, improving accuracy, and creating more efficient, transparent workflows that allow your business to scale with confidence. Here are some of the key benefits that our customers experience with Agilico Verify:
Save time and eliminate manual effort: Automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, invoice coding, matching, and approval routing, freeing your finance team to focus on higher-value work. Invoices flow into Xero with minimal human input.
Improve accuracy and data quality: Verify’s intelligent data capture and matching dramatically reduces errors, including duplicate invoices, mistyped data and incorrect coding, resulting in more reliable financial information in Xero.
Accelerate approvals and payments: Invoices are automatically routed to the right approvers based on your business rules. Multi-level approval workflows reduce delays, ensure timely payments, and strengthen supplier relationships.
Gain complete visibility and control: Every invoice includes a full audit trail showing who approved it, when, and why. Real-time dashboards provide oversight across departments and locations, helping you manage spend and prevent fraud.
Scale confidently as your business grows: Whether you’re handling higher volumes, multiple locations, or hybrid teams, Verify scales seamlessly with Xero. Handle greater complexity and growth without increasing headcount or workload.
On average, Agilico Verify customers report measurable results within weeks of deployment:
- 70% faster invoice processing times from receipt to posting
- Up to 90% fewer data entry errors
- 50% fewer supplier queries due to improved visibility
- Savings of two to three days per month in manual finance workload
Read the Full Case Study”Implementing Verify has transformed our invoice processing for Xero. The system is user-friendly, efficient, and has reduced manual entry, allowing us to focus on more strategic tasks.
Finance ManagerThe Skills Federation
Ready to Take Control of Your Invoice Processing?
Automating accounts payable with Verify not only enhances Xero – it transforms how your finance team works.
Say goodbye to manual invoice processing and hello to greater control, improved accuracy, and efficient, transparent workflows that scale with your business.
Watch our demo video to see Verify in action, or book a personalised demo with one of our Xero automation experts today.
Building a Business Case for
Accounts Payable Automation
Need help with building the business case for automating invoice processing for Xero? We have put together a free guide Accounts Payable Automation Buyer’s Guide: 6 Simple Steps to Help You Build the Business Case for Automated Invoice Processing.
This guide will equip you with the tools and insights you’ll need to build a persuasive business case. And we’ve created a free Sample Business Case with detailed examples of the sections your business case should include. It outlines essential steps to follow for implementing AP automation in your organisation. You will learn how to assess your current situation, define your goals, identify necessary system features and functionalities, and understand what to look for when researching solutions.
Once you complete these steps, you’ll have the information you need to create a business case that resonates with stakeholders and drives your organisation toward a more efficient future.
